Casualties in Sudan? An Israeli conspiracy, of course!

Gee, what isn't Israel's fault?

Sudan's President Field Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir claimed Tuesday that reports in western newspapers of hundreds of thousands dead in his country's brutal civil war are all part of an Israeli-led worldwide conspiracy.

In a rambling video-link interview from Khartoum, in which he connected with journalists based in eight different countries, al-Bashir also claimed fatality levels in Darfur were "less than 9,000," instead of a figure of upwards of 400,000 quoted in much of the media, and accepted by the United Nations.

Al-Bashir asserted that all talk of a serious conflict - and accusations that his Government has supported, trained and armed the brutal Arab Janjaweed militia, which has displaced, raped and robbed an estimated 2.5 million people in Darfur - were a western conspiracy engineered by Israel to divert attention from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.